*Official* Alienware M18xR1/R2 CPU Overclocking Thread - Learn How and Share Tips Here

This will vary between systems to an extent. It's going to be a little different on Ivy Bridge than it is with Sandy Bridge, and the working environment will also dictated limitations. I can run 4.4 to 4.5GHz all the time with good results in my cool house (70° or less). The highest I would recommend is the most you can do while maintaining control of temperatures. This will vary between systems and their working environments. You will most likely have no problem running between 4.0 to 4.5GHz for normal everyday use.

Ivy tends to run a little warmer. The 3920XM seems to have similar muscle to the 2920XM/2960XM at slightly lower clock speeds. The short story is that you will need to learn the basics of what to do and then spend some time to find the sweet spot for your CPU. This is only accomplished through trial and error. There are some settings that are aggressive, but still tame enough that they should work on all systems with the same or similar hardware configuration. From that point you can push harder in small increments and see where it leads.

I don't have Ivy Bridge, so my Sandy Bridge settings for voltage and amps might not be the best for Ivy Bridge. tecrp7 and Postal Painmaker seem to have a good handle on overclocking their 3920XM-based systems and perhaps they can share some tips as a starting point for BCLK, flex (voltage) and pri plane (amps) that you can try on the 3940XM. Your ideal max overclock settings might be a bit different than their 3920XM processors.

 

Hi all, I've been searching through the forums and ive been reading page after page but cannot find what i'm looking for. Basically I want to overclock my i7-2920xm (Extreme), i've found some good pages that Fox put up but the bios needs to be unlocked. My bios is locked and i'm wanting to know how to unlock it. My bios version is A05. I know people have done it to death but i just can't get all the info i need. Can someone point me in the right direction? I'm very very keen to push it to 4GHz if possible!! Thanks everyone!

 

I don't have the link to it, but you have to find the unlocked version and flash it to your system. I believe most people get it from Techinferno but some on here have it and may send it to you as well.

 

cool, i'm hoping someone will send me some links! I'm really interested to see this system overclocked.

anyone have links or some idea where to get the unlocked bios from so i can flash my system? cheers again!

 

Here is where I got mine from. BIOS Link

You hae to either post 5 times before you can download it or do what I did which was just pay the $5 for a membership. I figured someone went thru a lot of work to do this, might as well reward them for it.

 

^^^^^ Spot on!

 

thanks homank! i managed to flash bios no problems got it now running at 4200ghz! the strange thing is now bf3 is running worse than ever. the game is at a point where uts unplayable. any idea why? seems bizarre. thanks guys

 

It's probably throttling due to excess heat

 

thanks bricktop. what now? im a little lost. ive aeen many topics on throttling but unsure where to start. can anyone advise? thanks

 

The processor is throttling from heat. Hwinfo64 will helpful. As you can force the gpu fans full speed which help cool the processor as well. It's what I had to do to resolve my issue.

 

A couple of things to try...

First, at 4.2GHz you should be able to run zero flex, or close to it. If your flex is at the default of 25 that might cause overheating and throttling depending on that your pri plane is set at.

If lowering flex does not help, not running your CPU at 4.2GHz may fix that. Drop it down to 4.0GHz and see how BF3 runs. Unless you're in a very cool work environment, you may have issues with temps.

 

Hey guys, long time lurker thought I'd post and say what's up. I just got my Mx18 R2 a couple weeks ago. I love this machine, came from a Retina MBP. It is vastly under powered compared to this machine. I have never overclocked before so am very apprehensive about giving it a try. I am not looking for anything extreme or complicated, can you guys give me a couple numbers I can plug into BIOS and test out??

Thanks!

Alienware Mx18 R2 - 32GB Adata 1600MHz RAM - 240GB OCZ Vertex 4 - 750GB Standard HD - Crossfire 7970's - i7 3610QM - Running Modded BIOS A03

 

Does this seem right? For me to run stable at 4.6GHz I have to run flex at 40 and priplane at 3800, that is if my temps stay down which is hard to do at this speed. I can't get past the Windows welcome screen if I try 4.7 or higher.

 

I'm running very similiar settings for me but my priplane is almost half what you have set and I think my FLEX is 50. If I was in an AC hotel room I could run 4.6 with no throttling, without it it will obviously throttle.

I have had my computer run at 47 and 48 but I forget what settings it was at and it wasn't 100% stable so I gave up on it.

I can't give you any hard numbers since I don't know your processor but if you have the option in the bios to set a level of OC then that should be considered safe and conservative for you.

 

You guys are killing me here. You can not expect to run better than desktop processors at these same speeds on these small heat sinks with no breathing room. All you are going to accomplish is corrupting your os. Since it's pretty hard to burn up these chips. Your room temp dictates what you can get away with. the colder the surrounding temps, the better you laptop will run at the same exact settings. I can run flat out 4.8 to 4.9 ghz full throttle. Only if im sitting on my a/c. And what I mean by this is...I can bench wprime 1024 at those speeds without down clocking. If you can not do this at the clocks you set. You are not going to be stable for it under harsh conditions. These are not every day settings. These are speed run settings. Now the smart person would stagger this.48/46/44/42 or something like that to get the most out of the over clock. Not trying to run it on all cores 24/7. Because at the end of the...you will under no circumstance be able to hold a 4.8/4.7 or 4.6..might get lucky with a 4.5 though..Running folding@home which over clocking would be useful for. Now if you can in fact do this at 4.8 ghz for 24 hours, heck 15 minutes.....Then you can say it's stable for every day use. (max usage) If you are just running light apps, then you still can run 4.8 4.7 4.6, but start taxing the cpu to long and it will crash.... Just my observation into this.....

 

John my everyday setup is to run 4.3 and not have any issues, heck I've ran 4.5 all day without any issues, I just don't see a reason for me to be at that speed for everyday activities. I'm trying to get to the 4.7 and 4.8 range for benchmarking purposes. With winter coming I'll take my computer outside to get the best numbers feasible, but I must be able to get the system to boot at those speeds first.

 

Really? I didn't see any wprime 1024 runs from you at 4.5 ghz. And that is just a 3 minute full load run. My bad. Light work is different from 100 percent cpu usage....

Getting it to boot is understandable...I can relate to that though.

 

I'm still going to try to get to work with different numbers...might get lucky. I'm also looking at the 2960 if the price is right.

Might just have to go with Mr. Foxes idea and just run at 4.6 and boost the BLCK to makeup the difference.

 

Well, give us a run to add to the boards in the Benching thread my friend.

And to get it to boot. Set pri plane real high at first. and start booting flex at your last good setting, then go up by 5 till it boots. eventually it will boot all the way to windows. Set watts to as high as they will go. once in windows, use TS to make the watts max out. But do not try benching anything just yet. Your just trying to get there first.

 

Thanks for the tip, I'll go ahead and give it try right now as I have some time to kill. As for my benching numbers, I can't hang with the big dogs as my GPU's would be the limiting factor.

 

What exactly do you have?

 

Currently I have 580's and the price of 680s are just stupid at the moment.

 

Man, bench 3dmark06/aquamark/heaven they can compete there for sure. And the 580m were very solid cards!

 

Well, I set the priplane to 8000 and started the flex at 30 and ran it all the way up to 99 and still no boot.

 

what did you set the watts to in the bios?

 

Are you talking about Long Duration Power Limit? If that is what watts is, than to 99.

I'll also try priplane at 7000 and 6000 later tonight when I have more time. I may get lucky that way as well.

 

So you have a 2920xm...
if so...some chips just do not go past a certain speed...no matter what. they are hard coded like that...

First advance menu
45/45/45/45
flex=10 to 15

Power menu
99
56
99
pri-plane=1200
pri-plane=0
f10 and reboot
All in that order.

If you can not boot into windows...then im thinking it never will. The last resort would be getting it colder.

 

Before I try these numbers should I set one core to 47 or all of them?

 

Set it to exactly how i have it set. That is your defualt.
Once in windows. you will use 2.1 version of xtu to up blck and multipliers later.

We need to make sure you can get in comfortably first.

 

ive overclocked my cpu i7-2920xm to 4200ghz and all seems good. my issue is now bf3 is worse off, to tell you the truth its unplayable. some members have mentioned throttling is the issue. im new to this so im unsure where to begin. ive read some posts about throttling but again would like to know how i approach this with advise from the community. fyi - i have only 1 gtx580m card. thanks team

 

Rule number one. Always start at stock to get some form of a starting place....
Then start over clocking a little at a time.
So go back to stock and run battlefield and report back what happens.

 

John, I'm in the system now, but I had to go with Flex of 20 to get in, without it it would BSOD instantly.

 

20 flex at what multiplier?

 

45. Everything else is the same as you posted.

 

now use xtu and up multi to 46. and add 5 clicks to the turbo flex voltage. then click apply and reboot.

 

No problem there....

 

so you are in windows at 46x correct?

 

That is correct...all four cores.

 

ok. now try to run wprime 1.55 32 meg test.
set it to 8 threads and see what happens.

 

Here is a screen shot.

 

wrong version of wprime.
needs to be wprime 1.55

http://91.121.148.119/downloads/benchmarks/wPrime.exe

 

Try this again.

 

ok. that is much much better! Nice run!

 

Thanks! Do you think we can move up more in speed or should I be happy here?

 

keep going till you crash. but keep tabs on what you are doing.

set 47 and add 5 more clicks. then reboot and see if you can get into windows....if not, add another 5 clicks or + 5 flex vid in bios under the second advance menu only. then f10 and reboot.

 

Just keeping adding flex and not worry about priplane, at the moment at least. Here goes nothing.

Thanks for the help thus far.

 

No problem

 

Houston that is a no go, I repeat a no go. I can't get past the Windows starting at all.

 

Means your max multi is 46.
Now try bclking up.
You should be able to bclk in windows. Do not run hwinfo.
Go in increments of 5
Example:100.10 to 100.60
and so on...

 

Is there a reason not to run hwinfo?